So, the Ames City Council has put the issue of hotel/motel tax on the ballot. The tax is being increased to fund the expansion of Hilton Coliseum to 16,000 seats. University officials were in a great hurry to do this so students could vote on it and, presumably, approve it.

Well, I’m going to tell all readers of this column to vote against it until students get some guarantees. This expansion is meaningless if it’s going to be 2000 seats that students can’t sit in.

University officials should take most of the lower-level seats away from fat-cat boosters who sit on their hands and give them to students who will actually make some noise. A rotation program, at the very least, is called for. Also, football season tickets should not be a prerequisite for getting lower-level basketball seats.

I realize this expansion is aimed at attracting big name entertainment back to Ames. However, there is very rarely an excess demand for 2000 tickets for any event in Hilton. All this expansion will do is make it harder to sell out events. Iowa State has gotten events and continues to get events that are big time, but they are not big time enough to add 2000 seats.

We have trouble selling out basketball games as it is. This expansion will make Hilton look even more cavernous and empty on television. There is no pressing need for this expansion.

Not only is this expansion patently unneccesary, the tax that will be imposed will hurt Ames in the long and short run. This increase may not affect students directly, but it will hurt their parents and friends when they come to visit, and Lord knows it takes an effort to get people to come to Ames anyway.

Veishea attendance has been slipping due to the repressive ‘Cyclone Family’ measures, and this tax will not help one bit in attracting alumni and tourists back to Ames.

Hilton is a wonderful arena, both for basketball and for other events. The ISU administrators are behind the curve once again. Taxpayer- funded expansions and constructions are being voted down right, left and center.

Maybe if this vote had been two years ago, with the ISU men’s basketball program at unprecedented success levels, it could have succeeded. And maybe, at that time, it even should have succeeded. But it’s time has passed; it can’t and shouldn’t pass now because we don’t need it.

I can think of several other things that need the money more than Hilton. How about Ames schools, which are facing a severe budget crunch right now? How about money for new on-campus tennis courts (maybe even in the rec center)? Maybe money to fund lighting? I could go on and on.

But not Hilton expansion. The biggest crowds of the season for either men or women were the so-called “sellouts” against Kansas and the NCAA game against Santa Clara.

A better investment in Hilton might be what they do at the Louisiana Superdome. It always looks full on TV because the seats have a completely random, “people- like” color theme which the TV cameras can’t distinguish from actual people. I always wondered how they packed the place for New Orleans Saints games.

But returning to Hilton — vote NO on the expansion tax. Its unneccesary, excessive and unfair.

Jayadev Athreya is a senior in mathematics from Ames.