PROVIDENCE — The municipal agency that monitors the police is still working, clinging to its office space even though the rent has not been paid for four months and the water service briefly was turned off last week.

The Providence External Review Authority, backed by members of the City Council, has refused an order by the administration of Mayor David N. Cicilline to relocate from its current office space in a three-story converted Victorian house in Elmwood to leased city space in a downtown office building.

In an attempt to enforce its order, the administration stopped paying the monthly $1,500 rent and threatened the three-member PERA staff with disciplinary action for insubordination. And last week, the Narragansett Bay Commission had PERA’s water turned off for one day because its landlord is in arrears on the sewer bill for the house, at 550 Broad St.

Landlord Norris Waldron, who could not be reached for comment Monday, owes the Bay Commission $945, according to Kevin E. Deary, PERA executive director. At the request of PERA advocate Councilman Miguel Luna, Thomas M. Glavin, council chief of staff, intervened with the Bay Commission. The commission agreed to have the water turned back on and to allow Waldron a 90-day reprieve.

PERA, which investigates complaints of excessive use of force and other alleged misconduct by police officers and makes recommendations on discipline to the police chief, is wrapping up its second decision on a complaint despite the uncertainty over its future.

“The last nine months have been hell at PERA,” given the struggle over the agency’s offices and spending and the resulting distraction from the business of police misconduct, Deary said recently.

The city continues to pay for the electricity at PERA’s current location and to collect the trash. Before the relocation dispute was sparked in 2008, the mayor tried unsuccessfully to merge PERA with the Providence Human Relations Commission as a money-saving maneuver. But the council refused to go along and PERA was given $211,973 to spend for the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

Confronted by continuing fiscal distress, and in another attempt to save money, the administration told PERA to relocate to upper-floor space at 400 Westminster St. Administration officials contend that they have the power to oversee PERA’s spending and operations and that reservations expressed about the downtown office space, which has been readied for PERA, do not hold water.

PERA and at least some council members insist that the agency was created to work in semiautonomy from the rest of municipal government and that the administration has no authority to interfere with PERA spending as long as the agency stays within the limits of particular spending categories.

A majority of the PERA board of directors — the mayor and council appoint the directors — and its advocates say that the new office space is inadequate: Its furniture won’t fit, the space does not provide the confidentiality necessary for complainants and accused police officers, and citizens won’t want to come downtown to press their complaints, among other arguments. They say that they are willing to relocate to other space as long as it is sensible.

Further, PERA has plenty of money left in its appropriation to pay current and back rent at 505 Broad, according to Internal Auditor James J. Lombardi III, who works for the council. He has sent at least one sharply worded memo challenging the administration’s legal right to impound PERA funds.

The council created a subcommittee of five members to study PERA, and while that committee meets, the administration has refrained from taking additional action.

“I think it will all get worked out somehow,” Deary said Monday.

gsmith@projo.com