THE Alliance Party leader, Lord Alderdice, called for a local income tax system to replace the rating system.
Opening his party's local government elections campaign yesterday, Lord Alderdice said a handful of votes could change unionist domination of Belfast City Council and make power sharing possible.
"That is what the unionists and the DUP are afraid of power sharing amongst constitutional parties, not that Sinn Fein will take over City Hall."
But he insisted: "We have no intention of shoring up a unionist majority or shoring up a nationalist majority.
"It is time people understood that this notion that there is just two traditions, there's just two ways of looking at things it's never going to work. It creates Balkanisation in this place and that's all it has achieved."
He accused the Association of Local Authorities in Northern Ireland of being a "club" for Ulster Unionists to the exclusion of the broad spectrum of political parties, and called for a new united voice for local government.