We are not responsible for them in any way. Well, we're not in your area, but 146.535 has a fairly active group in the north Atlanta area. Come on in and join the fun if you're willing. It's a good group of folks, no OF's with an attitude. Welcome back to the essense of amateur radio, I belong to two clubs that existed before there were repeaters and in the process of getting one off the ground without a repeater.
Repeaters have their place and can serve an important function.
But just like cell phone systems they do go down from time to time. It's good to have a group that doesn't depend solely on a repeater to communicate. Where I work a group of us hams get together once a week for an ht net on simplex. We are in different buildings on a large campus and it is a challenge for us to hear everyone, but it does work. If we had to build a repeater to get started, the net would not exist since most of the 2 meter freqs. are coordinated already and repeaters are expensive propositions.