Combining public and private paths

For what it's worth, I have run into the same problem and the only solution I have found is to switch to a different access method. As best as I can tell svnserve is simply not an option when trying to set up a repository with path based authentication when select areas are flagged inaccessible to

View Log Problems When Using Path Based Authentication

I have a repository that I have configured to use path based permissions via svnserve (additional config info below). Any user that has authenticated has full read/write access to the entire repository while anonymous users have read only access to a single path in the repository, all other paths