Recently Orange City Council voted to pull out of the program -which involves Dubbo, Albury, Armidale, Bathurst, Tamworth and Wagga Wagga - at the end of June.

Evocities is targeted at encouraging Sydney residents to move to a regional centre, however Orange has decided to use the $65,000 they would have contributed in the next financial year to promote the city independently.

Orange councillor Russell Turner said he was concerned about the lack of state funding, and the drop in the number of households settling at Orange from 81 in 2014-15 to 19 to date in 2015-16.

However, Cr Walkom, who is also the Regional Development Australia Orana chairman, said Dubbo mayor Mathew Dickerson should try and convince Orange to remain in the initiative.

"Anywhere I go in the state or in Australia for that matter they start talking about regional development and how to relocate people into a regional area, the first project they talk about is Evocities and how outstanding that is," Cr Walkom said.

"You've got all the other rural and remote councils looking at it saying 'why can't we have something like this too?' they're all trying to replicate that."

Cr Walkom said if the six councils decided to remain and had to chip in an extra $10,000 per year it would be money well spent.

"I was a bit surprised at Orange saying they were going to pull out, but maybe they're saying they want to pull out when they just want to see some money from the government," he said.

"It would be great to get some money of the government in support of Evocities but irrespective of that I think the value that we get as a city from Evocities is outstanding."

The consequences of Orange leaving the program would be discussed at the next meeting with the mayors and general managers of the six cities, Cr Dickerson said.

"We'll have to have a conversation about that. We're dropping down from seven to six, is that enough to collapse the whole program or are we happy with six?" he asked.

But Cr Dickerson was confident the program would continue.