The "Ayes" have it. The Portland City Council approved the first steps toward Providence Park expansion. Details on the costs, design, timeline, and exact structure of the deal will emerge in future meetings and negotiations. For those who would like to see the proceedings, I believe they are at about the -1:00:00 mark here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax6xUnpJ3R0

The Council largely had positive things to say about the prospective deal and asked, especially for relative soccer outsiders tasked with fiscal responsibility on behalf of their constituents, reasonable questions, particularly about how fans shifting from taxed seats to temporarily untaxed (well, uncollected tax) seats might impact revenues and how expansion will raise the city's obligations/liabilities with respect to maintenance costs on a larger facility. I don't think either question was explicitly answered well enough but, with respect to the Thorns, it is all pretty much unexpected and unplanned revenue anyway, and future tax revenues from the new seats should defray maintenance costs long term.