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The Legislature urgently needs to pass a transportation funding package in 2017 to address the billions in backlogged maintenance needs that have led to potholes, deteriorating roads, bridges and transit systems across our region and the state. The longer we wait to fix the small problems, the bigger and more expensive they become. In fact, it costs eight times more to fix a road than to maintain it.

A plan to raise $52 billion over a decade for roads, bridges, and mass transit reflects a big, ugly bill that Californians have little choice but to pay.

Most of the money, to come from higher gas taxes and vehicle fees, would go to repair infrastructure that residents are already using — and, in many cases, have been using long and often enough that it’s falling apart. Depressed oil prices and proliferating hybrid and electric vehicles have increased the need by cutting into gas-tax revenue. Uncertain federal support under President Trump could make matters worse.

The Concord City Council — along with other city councils — has been advocating with state leaders for local road repair funding, its importance to reducing auto maintenance costs, to ensure a strong economy, and for safety (reducing accidents due to poor road conditions).

We have explained that the self-help funding that exists both locally and regionally is not enough. It’s been 23 years since California has increased funding for transportation, and that money has lost about 50 percent of its buying power.

Traffic and transportation needs are at the front of many of our minds in Marin. Municipalities and agencies across the county are constantly examining how they can make the worthy investments needed in our roads and transportation infrastructure.

At the state level, California is overdue in addressing our local roads, highways and bridges, and state funding reductions have drastically impacted local road maintenance programs.

That’s why we are thanking state Sen. Mike McGuire for coauthoring Senate Bill 1.

The behemoth transportation funding bill passed by the Legislature this week conforms to the poet John Godfrey Saxe’s famous aphorism about laws and sausages — that both “cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” The last leg of the plan’s journey through the Sacramento meat grinder only added more of the legislative equivalent of unsavory animal parts.