Jack Duncan out of commission until 2017

Longboat Key Mayor Jack Duncan is on the road to recovery — again.

Duncan, 67, was hospitalized for less than a week after a quadruple bypass heart procedure Nov. 18. He returned home in time for Thanksgiving weekend, his family said.

The mayor said it will be awhile before he wields the gavel again for the Longboat Key Commission. Doctors have placed him on a restricted-movement regimen for 30 days. He can’t lift more than 5 pounds, drive or even sit in the front seat out of concern for the possible damage a deployed airbag could inflict.

“They keep telling me the same thing over and over again: You will do up to this amount and that is it,” Duncan said. “You won’t push beyond it.”

Duncan described 2016 as a “very, very interesting year” in terms of his health.

He said he thought he had a heart attack in January before doctors “drilled out” the carotid artery. Then, he contracted pneumonia in March, which eventually triggered his cardiologist’s attention, he said. When tests showed blockages in arteries to his heart, Duncan was back in the hospital.

“(They) thought I had one or two small blockages, but it ended up there was four, and they had to bypass four arteries,” he said.

Vice Mayor Terry Gans will fill in for the mayor at the next Town Commission meeting at 7 p.m. Dec. 5.

Town Manager David Bullock said he’s coordinated mayoral duties with Gans and anything he would normally take to Duncan will go the vice mayor while the mayor recovers.

Duncan, a retired marketing executive, moved to Longboat Key in 1999. He will end a six-year run on the Town Commission in March, when he reaches his term’s limit. 

Former Mayor George Spoll, who is unopposed in the March 14 election, will succeed Duncan in the District 2 seat.