THE budget consultation period has been heralded a success by Southern Downs Regional Council, but some ratepayers say their voices have been ignored.

The 2017-18 budget introduces a 3.4% rise across the general rate and utility charges for water, wastewater and waste collection, below the expected 4% consistent with the long- term financial forecast.

It also forecasts a moderate operating surplus of $399,000, as well as a further reduction of debt by $2million.

Mayor Tracy Dobie said the lower rate increase recognised many ratepayers were in challenging financial circumstances.

But Southern Downs Residents Action Group secretary Andrew Gale said many ratepayers continued to feel the pinch of rising rates.

"We commend the council for the public consultation but there have been submissions that have had no effect whatsoever," MrGale said.

"The things we made a submission for were ensuring equipment was being replaced when needed or was getting more out of their life, like the mobile library which is being replaced for $250,000 but we believe had a couple of years left.

"It's disappointing to see this spending going ahead when the base rates continue to rise and there are people in the community who are hurting."

Cr Dobie said the rate rise would have occurred regardless of these capital works projects.

"One of the big things we changed from the draft budget was to hold over the review of the wastewater charges," she said.

"The feedback we got was there was a great concern for the impacts the per-pedestal charges would have on small business.

"We also froze Killarney's wastewater charge for 12months because, of the five categories we have at the moment, Killarney's is by far the highest and they were expecting to see a decrease with the more streamlined charging system. It would have been unfair not to have done something in that case.

"We had about 50 submissions again in this year's public consultation, but the submissions were of a higher quality and the attendance at draft budget sessions was more than double since last year.

"It shows people want to take ownership in moving our region forward."