AURORA | Aurora police should ditch 10-hour shifts for 12-hour shifts for some patrol officers and hire 15 new officers next year, according to a list of 55 recommendations from a consulting firm tasked with studying police staffing.

The report from Novak Consulting Group said the department needs to move from the 10-hour shifts to a more-complicated mix of 12-hour and 8-hour shifts to free officers to do more proactive policing.

“The first is that the current 10-hour shift schedule utilized for patrol officers ineffectively pairs resources with peak workload periods,” the executive summary of the report said.

City Council’s Public Safety Committee was set to discuss the new report at a meeting Sept. 20.

City officials released the report last week and said council and staff will begin diving into the results at the Sept. 20 meeting.

According to the study, Aurora needs to aim for 73 new officers by 2022 by hiring 14 for the next three years and 14 in 2021 and 2022. All of the new hires next year should go to the investigations division, which the report said is understaffed.

But, the executive report said it may be unwise for the city to set rigid hiring standards and said officials should instead hire new officers and deploy.

“Actual staffing needs should be evaluated on an annual or biannual basis within the context of actual workload growth, rather than forecasts,” the summary said.

Police staffing has long been a hot-button issue at city hall.

In the early 1990s voters approved a mandate that said Aurora must have two police officers for every 1,000 residents.

But almost immediately after voters approved the 2-per-1,000 requirement more than 20 years ago, the police union has been at odds with city management over whether the city was abiding by the ratio.

In 2011, the two sides agreed to a compromise that set the police staffing floor at 658 officers — the total of commissioned officers when the deal was reached. From then until 2021, the deal called for adding officers at a rate of 1.6 per every 1,000 residents.

Still, union leaders grumbled in recent years that the city wasn’t hiring enough cops to keep up with even that lower mandate.