LADY LAKE -- Entrances into The Villages have all the appearances of a tightly secured private development.

Employees sit at security gates, briefly stopping drivers as mechanical arms swing up and down over the roadway to allow one vehicle to pass at a time.

A camera often records the tag numbers of each vehicle. Residents also use electronic cards to gain entry through their own lane.

However, many roads inside The Villages' neighborhoods are not privately controlled -- they are public streets that must be maintained with public tax dollars.

Lady Lake budgets $100,000 a year to resurface aging and broken streets around town. Many are behind The Villages' walled-in borders.

"Despite the appearance of a gated community, a lot of the roads are public there," Lady Lake Town Manager Jim Coleman said.

The town's proposed schedule of road-resurfacing projects within the next year or so includes West Boone Court and Water Tower Circle on the east side of the massive development, east of U.S. Highway 27-441.

Portions of Schwartz Boulevard and Paradise Drive could be repaved in 2005.

About 5,400 feet of Rio Grande Avenue could get new blacktop by the end of 2007.

The builder of the community turned over many streets to the town years ago. Lady Lake gave special permission for The Villages to build the gates along the public right of way, according to town officials.

The town still is responsible for the upkeep of roads.

Lake County handles the streets in a large enclave of hundreds of homes in the center of the development, Coleman said.

He said many of those streets also need attention.

Lady Lake's street maintenance list also includes other areas of town, such as Clay Avenue, Hermosa Street and Lady Lake Boulevard.

"People always like to drive on good roads -- it's a visible thing that taxpayers can see where their dollars are going," Commissioner Johanna Perrigo said.

April Hills -- an older development of homes on Lady Lake's south side -- will miss most of the proposed roadwork.

The reason, public works director Fred Blakely said, is because the area of homes mostly on septic tanks is scheduled to get sewer lines in coming years.

Much of the utility work will require Lady Lake to tear up roads, replacing them with new asphalt once the sewer lines are installed.

In a separate project, Lady Lake is working to pave Oak Street near The Villages' industrial park west of U.S. 27-441.

The town installed a large sewer line through that area years ago, but officials never acquired public easement of the privately owned land, Coleman said.

Part of the project is to get the needed easement for both the wastewater line and the street.

Roughly a mile of Oak Street -- a dirt path listed on many maps as an actual street -- will be paved with two lanes from Rolling Acres Road east to Clay Avenue. The cost: roughly $1 million.

When completed, Oak Street will give extra access to The Villages' industrial area, which includes The Villages Elementary of Lady Lake.

The corridor also could open mostly vacant properties for new development.