After some brief confusion, Mayor Allan Fung and his staff are reviewing the amended Ocean Avenue fishing ordinance.

Initially, the Mayor’s office received the original copy of the ordinance, which banned all fishing at the public access point at the Ocean Avenue lookout. After hours of deliberation at the July 24 Council meeting, language was added to the bill to fall in line with the state Constitution’s heavy protections on fishermen’s rights. The council changed the ordinance to say that fishing would be allowed on the shoreline and seawall, but outlawed it on the guardrail and sidewalk.

The Mayor was set to veto the original ordinance, which could have provoked the ire of groups like Save the Bay, before the error was caught earlier this week.

Now, the ordinance is under review, but Mayor Fung’s assistant Mark Schieldrop said Fung will not veto it.

“That line there that refers to the public access point, that was the language that the administration had some concerns with,” Schieldrop said Tuesday. “We’re glad that we spotted that error doing our due diligence and we’re glad that we’re able to work with the City Council collaboratively to make sure that the correct ordinance was transmitted.”

Schieldrop added that there was no telling what issues could have arisen down the road if the mistake wasn’t caught and the Mayor vetoed an ordinance that was never passed.

“I can only imagine how complicated it could have gotten,” Schieldrop said. “If the incorrect version was transmitted and we acted on that at some point down the road, it could have come to light that there was a discrepancy between what the Council passed and what was transmitted.

“It’s very fortunate, the Mayor himself raised the questions when he was reviewing the ordinance. We started looking into it and yesterday afternoon after we talked with City Council members, [and] we were all working on different pieces of paper.”