I absolutely think we need more repeaters. I'd have put my own up already, but for the fact that once I got out the topo maps and found the best place within thirty mile, I discovered that a) the whole hilltop is owned by the water company, b) it has a large water tower on it that's already covered with ham repeaters, c) a local ham group convinced the water company to let them manage all antenna placement, and d) the ham group won't even discuss details like access/rent/maintenance/etc. unless you're a licenced ham who's joined their group.
Instead, I'm trying to convince my wife to let me cut a hole in the tower ceiling of our victorian and place one up there. It'll likely get a quarter the range, but no one gets to tell me how things are going to work!
As for the "don't be stupid, that's what ham is for" brigade, I'm ignoring them. My group wants to build reliable emergency comms for our region that *doesn't* require gatekeeper hams to use it. You'll never get churches, schools, and community centers to fund/maintain personnel to get and stay trained so they've always got a ham on staff, but a $35 license and a $100 HT is completely feasible. And that's not to mention being able to interoperate with actual community members for the price of $15 walkies from Walmart! A school or community member can keep a whole box of those things in the basement and just hand them out with ten minutes' instruction in an emergency, and they can even just listen in to repeater outputs to keep track of what's going on locally.
