The “Boss of the Beach” is just a drop in the ocean.

A gobsmacking 62 government retirees — including double-dipping former Big Apple chief lifeguard Peter Stein — pulled pension payments of at least $200,000 last year from the city’s retirement system, data shows.

Stein’s tsunami-sized $570,000 pension payment led all others in the New York City Employees’ Retirement System during 2025, excluding back pay, the Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY.net website reports.

All told, the dozens of high-flying high-earners such as Stein and scores more modest city retirees took in nearly $6.2 billion in taxpayer-funded payouts last year, according to the data.

“These eye-popping payouts reflect a fundamentally broken system, not just individual wrongdoing,” said Abdullah Ar Rafee, a data manager at the Empire Center for Public Policy.

“Between overtime spiking and legacy benefit rules, New York’s pension design rewards benefit padding at the explicit expense of the public.”

The top pensions besides Stein’s went to a grab bag of former civil servants, including a veteran prosecutor and a long-retired doctor. They are, according to the data:

• Nicolas Audi, retired from the Department of Environmental Protection in 2018 — with $341,487 in total pension payments.
• Warren Murray Jr., retired from the District Attorney’s Office in 2021 — $325,015 in total pension payments.
• Eileen Barkow, retired from the City’s Department of Information, Technology and Telecommunications in 2023 — $297,130 in total pension payments.
• Roger Smoke, retired from the Health and Hospitals Corporation in 2014 — $293,183 in total pension.

Stein stood out from the other top retirement earners in several ways.

For one, Stein retired last year and still topped the list. Only nine retirees who collected their first full-year pension during 2025 received more than $200,000, according to the Empire Center. Some 490 received six-figure payouts, the data showed.

He also long faced public scrutiny for his dual career, in which he served as a full-time gym teacher and chief lifeguard, drawing the “Boss of the beach” nickname.

Other public servants with giant golden parachutes — such as Smoke, a doctor with the city’s hospital system who retired in 2014 — generated far less smoke during their careers.

Likewise, Murray was a decorated prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and mentored scores of attorneys even into retirement, according to a glowing obituary after he died in June.

The average pension by “full career” city retirees stood at $62,582 last year.

But the number of six-figure pensioners has doubled from roughly 1,600 during 2020 to 3,200 last year, according to data.

Stein’s pension payment was outpaced only by Lucradia Riddick, an Administration for Children’s Services retiree who received a $627,886 payment, data shows.

Riddick’s payment, however, included roughly $404,000 in backpay.

The roughly $6 billion in pension payouts for city workers last year is peanuts compared to the nearly $17 billion paid out by the state’s largest retirement system.