Anderson's office didn't seek City Council approval before building the Celebration of Life monument at Library Square, even though city coffers may be tapped to pay off the remaining $336,000. The council, not the mayor, is in charge of allocating money.

But council members weren't informed of the possible bill until questions were raised by The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this month.

Hoping to avoid the pitfalls of scandal-ridden Salt Lake County, City Councilman Carlton Christensen called for the audit.

"I want our city to be on the up and up. If there are some issues there, we have a moral and legal obligation to at least disclose them," he said.

The auditors will explore if city and state procedures were followed in approving the organ-donation monument and ways to avoid problems in the future.

Besides the monument transactions, the auditors will analyze all of the $3.8 million worth of work done on the east side of the Main Library, where the monument sits. The mayor's office was in charge of the library's east side.

The $636,000 organ-donation monument was supposed to be a gift to the city from the nonprofit Quest for the Gift of Life Foundation. But not all of the money was raised by the time the monument - which includes a fountain and a glass wall with names of organ donors - opened in April 2004. The foundation has since folded.

Anderson said Tuesday he thought until recently that Quest, not the city, was on the hook for the monument tab. The mayor said he wouldn't have committed city money to pay off the contractor, Big D Construction.

Still, Anderson said he isn't blaming the two people who signed the contract with Big D - D.J. Baxter, his senior adviser, and Nancy Tessman, library director.

"I'm the mayor and I'm not going to leave anybody out for blame on this other than myself," Anderson said.

The mayor was the one who pushed to have the monument built without all the funds in place. A 2004 letter from Quest to Big D, obtained through an open-records request, shows Quest considered building the monument in stages and delaying building the fountain.

"The mayor felt strongly that the monument should not be constructed in stages and not only committed to help raise the funds necessary to complete the water feature, but generously contributed $75,000 on his and his family's behalf," wrote Lisa Hawthorne, director of Quest's public education.

Anderson said this week he pushed the project because he thought it would be less expensive to build the monument all at once and that fundraising would dwindle if it were built in phases.

"The major purpose for this monument is to raise consciousness about the dire need for organ donations," he said. "I didn't want to delay any of that because I thought that lives might indeed be lost."

hmay@sltrib.com