Saanich police will soon be paying twice as much for an electronic database that helps officers track criminals and crimes.

The Police Records Information Management Environment (PRIME), a province-wide database, will, as of 2010, charge $1,000 an officer for the service, up from $500 per head this year.

"The actual amount on relative short notice is a concern to everybody in policing," said Mayor Frank Leonard, who chairs the Saanich police board. "We certainly were getting indications of an increase, but to what extent, we weren't sure."

Chief constable Mike Chadwick said numbers had been tossed around, including the likelihood of doubling the costs, so he was prepared for the news, which came last month in a memo from solicitor general Kash Heed.

"We're going to go forward with a new resource request in our budget to accommodate that difference," he said.

But Saanich isn't the only district seeing a jump in the cost; the PRIME system is mandatory for all detachments.

Saanich police currently have 151 members, which means the department is on the hook for more than $150,000 next year.

"It's about a $75,000 increase to our PRIME system," Chadwick said.

Although the costs have been put in next year's budget, no decisions will be made on where the money will come from until sometime next year, Leonard said.

"We're going to have to squeeze in some places to cope with that kind of an increase," he said.

The PRIME system is operated by PRIMECorp. It has a three-tiered governing body that includes a governance council, on which Chadwick is a sitting member.

"Presumably the costs of maintaining PRIME over the last several years has increased exponentially, in order to continue to roll out some of the projects that PRIME has on board ... levies have to increase," he said.

PRIME was implemented in 2003 as a management system for law enforcement to have easier and a wider-range of access to information.

kslavin@saanichnews.com