A new report by city staff recommends that council allow municipal officers, special constables and peace officers to direct traffic.

The report suggests that in addition to police officers, the city could utilize trained civilians to direct traffic and close highways in short-term situations.

The report indicates that this change could be made under the current Highway Traffic Act.

“Even though a special constable is not a ‘police officer’ as defined in the PSA, a special constable can be given the partial authority of a police officer for limited purposes,” the report states.

In 2015, more than 3,000 Toronto police officers obtained paid duty work at an hourly rate of $68 for a total of more than $25 million. The city paid nearly $1.5 million last year for paid duty work.

The use of highly trained officers, such as those who oversee construction sites or larger scale city events like Jays games, has been debated over the past few years.

Many have questioned why highly trained officers are required for such events.

The report identifies concerns within the current model including high costs, the inability of police to fill all paid duty requests and the impact these assigned shifts may have on regular police work.

Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong told CTV Toronto that the proposed changes have the potential to ‘free up money’ for the city.

“It could save us a lot of money and it could allow us to do many different things,” he said. “If it freed up that type of money, we could deploy more people and more police officers into the community. So it makes a lot of sense.”

The president of the Toronto Police Association told CP24 that the police union is open to discussing possible changes but does not believe that the suggestions will help reduce the $1-billion police budget.

McCormack added that many of the paid duty assignments police officers perform do not involve traffic or highways.

“In a lot of national sporting events there is a pre-requirement to have uniformed police officers,” he said. “It is a whole sort of smoke-screen that by the city doing this that it is going to have an impact on big events like that.”

Councillor Gord Perks told CTV Toronto he would welcome the changes if approved.

“Directing traffic and making sure traffic happens safely is something you can provide very specific training for,” said Perks. “You don’t need the full suite of training to be a police officer to safely direct traffic, so it would be a welcome reform.”

The staff report is on the agenda for next week’s executive committee meeting.

With files from Natalie Johnson.