There are two questions left that needed to be answered.
1) How to handle spells that would be of epic level?
2) Can touch spells be made persistent?
The consensus appears to be to make epic spells cast more to cast using divine metamagic (or similar feat). So making a spell equivalent 10th costs one extra spell level, 11th, costs 2 extra, and so forth. That means that making a 9th level spell persistent would cost 12 slots.
Touch spells still under consideration. Thoughts?