The Police Pension Fund refused yesterday to formally yank a $52,365-a-year disability pension from a cop who retired with a shoulder injury, was caught on a construction job and ordered back to work — only to be disqualified for NYPD duty when cocaine was discovered in his system.

The city’s representatives on the board favored the pullback; all the police union representatives rejected it, resulting in a tie vote.

That meant that the extraordinary saga of former police officer James Seiferheld, 47, is about to enter another strange chapter.

He remains in what one official described as a “weird limbo,” with city officials still refusing to resume issuing the retirement checks they summarily ended in 2007 without approval of the entire pension fund.

“Pension laws that permit this result must be changed,” said Finance Commissioner David Frankel, one of Mayor Bloomberg’s representatives on the pension board. “The result is absurd. Taxpayers cannot afford to pay a disability pension for a perfectly healthy former officer who failed a drug test.”

Seiferheld retired in 2004 after 12 years, but was quickly ordered back when investigators videotaped him doing work that raised questions about the injury he had claimed.

There was one problem — he couldn’t pass the medical exam because of coke detected in a hair sample.

That’s when things got even more complicated.

The city’s Law Department ordered that his pension be stopped in 2007, resulting in a lawsuit.

The state’s highest court reluctantly ruled that the city had acted improperly because it hadn’t secured a vote of the pension fund.

Seiferheld’s lawyer, Robert Ungaro, suggested the simplest remedy was for the city to offer his client another job outside law enforcement.

“They either give him his pension or return him to work,” said Ungaro. “Any conduct we’re talking about occurred when Jim was a retired citizen. He was not a police officer . . . He was not subject to the code of conduct.”

Additional reporting by Philip Messing

david.seifman@nypost.com

