1. The former head of Sound Transit, Joni Earl, who took over in 2000 and is widely credited with bringing the agency back from the brink of collapse after cost overruns mired the original light rail plan voters approved in 1996, took the stage in her wheel chair at a black tie cocktail party at Husky Stadium on Friday night to celebrate Saturday’s Capitol Hill and Husky Stadium station debuts.

It was a poignant moment, and the packed room, which had largely talked over the evening’s other speeches (including one from King County Executive Dow Constantine), fell silent as Earl, who suffers from a brain injury and officially retired in 2014, praised the current staff (“this agency is in good hands”) and joked that the infamous Seattle process was easy peasy compared to the federal hoops the agency had to go through to complete the project—ahead of schedule and under budget, she noted.

People in the crowd were teary eyed as Earl, who mayor Ed Murray had credited moments before with “quite literally making this all possible,” concluded her remarks to sustained applause.

Murray, the only other speaker who seemed to be able to quiet the room, offered a cautious note to the celebratory crowd on hand from the political and transit establishment. He pointed out that the pending November ballot measure to extend light rail to Everett, Tacoma, Kirkland and within Seattle, was not a sure thing and would require a big election season push. He’s right. The details of the regional ballot measure are coming soon and the price tag—a combo of Sound Transit 1 and Sound Transit 2’s sales and motor vehicle excise tax plus a new property tax could be as much as $40 to $50 billion.

 2. Speaking of property taxes: Another ballot measure coming this year (on August’s primary ballot), is the $290 million proposed housing levy, which doubles the expiring 2009 levy.

Over at Sightline this morning, Dan Bertolet has posted a convincing case for supporting the levy. For starters he has this great line: “The proposed housing levy would cost the owner of a $480,000 home a total $122 per year—about as much as a subscription to Netflix.”

But here’s the best part of his case—or at least the one housing advocates should pick up on—given the pushback that’s likely on the way from Seattle liberals.

After pointing out that there’s an exemption from property taxes for low-income households and the elderly, Sightline has this bit of news:

Second, the robust, long-term appreciation of homes in Seattle gives homeowners with limited means the option of borrowing against their equity to cover unanticipated expenses. Home equity can be converted to cash through refinancing, a home equity line of credit, or a reverse mortgage. The cost of the levy is so paltry compared to Seattle’s historic home value appreciation that a very modest loan would cover it, and ongoing equity gains would provide a long-term cushion to pay back loans.

In fact, this equity resource could be leveraged to easily cover a typical homeowner’s entire property tax bill. Remember: Seattle’s 16-year average annual home price gain was roughly five times the total property tax paid over those same years. So over that period, the typical Seattle homeowner could have extracted her entire annual property tax bill out of equity from appreciation and still been left with a net gain of over 80 percent on her home value. And while taking this sort of loan to pay taxes is surely not the most palatable idea to most people, it is a realistic solution that means no one ever need be taxed out of her home.

The city council hasn’t begun officially vetting Mayor Murray’s housing levy proposal, a key piece of his affordable housing plan with a goal of creating 2,150 of the 20,000 affordable housing units he wants to create in the next decade. But with another component in jeopardy in Olympia (a tax break for landlords to provide about 3,000 affordable housing units that speaker of the house state representative Frank Chopp, D-43, Wallingford, killed because tax breaks for, gasp, landlords don’t compute with his Baby Boom liberalism), watch for a push from council members to actually increase the levy above and beyond Murray’s ask and also make Murray’s recent $5 million add in state of emergency money permanent.

For example, new council member Rob Johnson says: “I’m very interested in increasing what the mayor sends down. At a minimum it seems like we should make the $5 million in state of emergency funding permanent over the next six years.”

3. More changes in the mayor’s office.

On Friday, I reported the high profile news that Murray’s communications director (his second one now) is leaving to take a job at Microsoft. But in lower-profile, but more significant news, Murray’s transportation policy director, Andrew Glass Hasting, is moving out of the executive’s office and over to the Seattle Department of Transportation, where he’s going to head up SDOT’s new transit and mobility division. The new division—basically the transit advocacy wing of SDOT created by new director Scott Kubly—was initially headed up by Paulo Nunes-Ueno who left after less than a year.

It’s not likely Murray will replace Hastings because much like other former mayoral policy staffers—Brian Surratt who now heads up the office of economic development and Kathy Nyland who heads up the department of neighborhoods—Hastings will likely staff Murray informally on transit issues.

“Transit is how we are going to move our growing city,” Hastings says. “The mayor and voter mandates [bus service and bus rapid transit lanes] are there. We have to work with our local and federal partners to get it right.” And he adds: “Mobility programs—car share, bike share, Lyft, Uber—will extend the reach of our transit system. I love that I now get to focus on areas I’m most passionate about.”

Kubly’s email to staff on Friday said:

Dear Colleagues, 

I am pleased to announce that Andrew Glass Hastings will be our new Transit and Mobility Division Director. Many of you already know Andrew from his current role as Mayor Murray’s Transportation Advisor, and you may have worked with him in his previous roles at King County DOT, SDOT and Sound Transit. Andrew has a broad and strategic understanding of transit and mobility issues and has helped the Mayor and SDOT develop and execute key policies and initiatives including the 2014 transit measure, the Move Seattle Levy and Sound Transit 3. He has also run two transportation campaigns, the 2006 Bridging the Gap levy and the 2008 Sound Transit 2 measure.

Andrew is excited to join the department and lead an amazing team focused on our expanding role in transit, increasing mobility options and balancing our curb space priorities. I want to thank the Transit & Mobility team for their patience and willingness to step up and cover assignments during the transition.