Editor’s Note: TRL has attempted to get in contact with all political candidates running for town council for news coverage. The candidates were reached over the span of several weeks to cover a unique angle of each candidate running, and TRL does not favor any candidate over another.
In a garage in Houston, Larry Little and his wife, Pam Little, started Ace Fence Company, their now multi-million dollar company. Creating the biggest fence company in the metroplex calls for action. Larry sets budgets and maintains fiscal responsibility by paying close attention to the ups and downs of the balance sheet.
Larry believes the knowledge he gained from running a business will prepare him for Seat 4 on Fairview Town Council.
“Running a town is kind of like running a company,” Larry said. “A town is kind of a company; you get the same employees, budgets and that type of thing. I felt that I could give back to the town some of the experiences, things I’ve been through, business and help the town in that way. So that’s kind of the legacy of my political career is going to be these aspirations.”
His mission
Larry and Pam both graduated from Texas A&M University University. Larry calls Texas A&M “a unique universe,” saying “from the outside looking in, you don’t understand it, and from the inside looking out you can’t explain it.” He uses tools from college in his everyday life.
“I really think I can get along with people and look at each situation as being in the middle,” Larry said. “The town’s here. The residents are here. I’m in the middle, and [I] try to make an honest evaluation of what I think is best. I’m not a town guy. I’m not a total resident guy. I’ve got to look at both sides of it and try it with my common-sense approach.”
Larry’s slogan is ‘Keeping Fairview Great.’
“I think it’s a great town to live in,” Larry said. “We’ve been here for about 18 years. I want to make sure the town keeps providing the necessary resources and services that our residents expect, and I think we’re doing that. There’s a saying ‘if something’s not broken, don’t fix it.’ I don’t feel Fairview is broken. I think it runs very well.”
The majority of the land that is left to develop on the east side of the town is already zoned.
“In my opinion, on the new stuff, the smallest we should ever go is an acre,” Larry said. “And again everything’s relative to where the tract [of land] is, what’s around it, and whoever’s buying it. My goal is to keep as much space as we can in Fairview so the future, in my opinion, is going to be larger lots.”
In order to not raise the tax rate but still get the money the town needs, Larry looks to “brainstorm” with the other members on the council.
“The importance of making sure the town center is successful is for revenues,” Larry said. “I mean the town gets a lot of money from it. It’s tough for shopping centers to succeed, so it really takes a combination. I just want the town council to see what can we do, and it’s not just us. It needs support from Allen; it needs support from McKinney to help make it successful.”
Campaigning
Larry’s wife, Pam, helped with the campaign. She ran and served on Fairview Town Council from 2016-2018 and calls herself his “communications person.”
“One of the things that I think I can help him with is I know a little bit of the history,” Pam said. “I know what happened previously. I designed and created that brochure that you see. I’ve done some Facebook posts. I’ve done some Nextdoor posts.”
Pam is on the State Board of Education for District 12. She plans to try “as best as [she] can” to share an educational point of view with her husband.
“One of the issues that we have in Fairview, is that we are a town of two districts,” Pam said. “Where we live, in the northwest corner of Fairview, all the way down to Stacy Rd., it’s McKinney ISD. It’s a little different perspective from the Lovejoy ISD, and one of the things when I was on council that I tried to do is work towards getting more recognition of both districts.”
Sue Reeves, Larry’s friend since 2006, co-chaired the meet and greet at Heritage Ranch before Larry’s campaign shut down from COVID-19.
“When he called me and told me he was going to run, I said ‘What can I do? What do you want me to do? What can I do,?’” Reeves said. “It was not like he said would you please do. I just said ‘just tell me what I can do to help’ because I think he is very good for Fairview.”
Reeves is also an active political citizen for the last half century; she is on the precinct chair in Fairview in 179.
“I think Larry Little is running for all of the right reasons,” Reeves said. “Over these many years, sometimes I’ve seen candidates who would get into a race to maybe they had an agenda, and they wanted to foster their own agenda. Some maybe we’re using that as a stepping stone to a higher office, and they had in mind, running for something else and thinking that would be a good stepping stone to get them started. Larry Little has none of those. He is a successful businessman. He’s a leader in the community.”
