SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Seeing leaves and debris in her neighborhood, Linda Wilson can’t help but clean up, because things, she said, don’t need to look terrible.

She wishes she could fix the roads in her community, because she said they to need more than a little help.

“The roads are terrible,” Wilson said. “It’s not only me, it’s the people that I talk to and my friends driving up and down where we swerve around to miss potholes.”

Wilson doesn’t need to look far for potholes.

A deep one is only 100 feet from her home, she said, has been there for months.

And even though she only lives 20 minutes from downtown Sacramento, she said it doesn’t feel like she’s in the city when she’s on the road.

“It’s really like driving off-road. That’s how bad it is around here,” Wilson said.

The roads where Wilson lives are maintained by Sacramento County.

Matt Johnson with the Department of Transport said they are always trying to improve road standards, but financially they’re hampered.

“Unfortunately, we have been finding that we are about $800 million in the hole when it comes to the amount of money needed to fix all the roads in the unincorporated area,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the huge financial build up has been caused by a growing population and hindered by climate change, such as last year’s frequent atmospheric rivers.

“Because of the brute force of the rain coming through and the amount that sat on the road for a long time,” Johnson said. “It did hamper maintenance crews because they weren’t able to get to the roads.”

County roads, on a scale of 1 to 100, sit at roughly 50 Johnson said, meaning they are in a fair condition. To improve them and raise them to a good condition around 70, Johnson said they would need millions more in the yearly budget.

Johnson said county supervisors have raised the department’s budget to keep the roads from deteriorating any further [staying at a 50 scoring mark] and are looking for state and federal grants to improve roads rather than only filling in potholes.

With knowing it may be awhile before the pothole in her neighborhood is repaired with more than just a band aid, Linda says she does have some level of understanding for the county.

“There are so many roads to take care of. And I understand that it takes a long time,” Wilson said.

But she also said the roads are the worst she has seen them in decades and hopes officials make road conditions a top priority before the backlog gets out of hand.