(a) Except as provided under §16.38 of this subchapter, if at the close of the application period the office has received multiple applications that propose to provide broadband service to the same broadband serviceable locations, the office shall, prior to publishing information regarding the applications as required by §16.36 of this subchapter, resolve the overlapping areas to ensure that the award of grant funds are not duplicated for a broadband serviceable location.
(b) The office shall resolve overlapping applications; by evaluating each impacted application independently; and the office shall:
  (1) score each impacted application and the application receiving the highest score shall proceed to grant funding consideration with its project area locations intact; and
  (2) remove the overlapping project locations from the lower scored applications and provide notice to the impacted applicants that the overlapping project locations have been removed from the application.
(c) The office shall provide notice of a determination made by the office under subsection (b) of this section to each affected applicant including notice of the right, if any, to submit an amended application under subsection (e) of this section.
(d) If removing overlapping project locations as provided under subsection (b) of this section results in the application retaining less than 50% of the broadband serviceable locations originally proposed for the project area, the office shall contact the applicant to determine whether the applicant wants to proceed with a substantially reduced application and the office shall take into account this preference when determining whether to remove the application from further consideration. The office may, notwithstanding the preference of an applicant to proceed with a substantially reduced application, at its sole direction, remove the application from grant funding consideration.
(e) If the office removes an overlapping location from an application, an applicant may amend and resubmit an application without the overlapping location if:
  (1) The remaining number of broadband serviceable locations in the project area is greater than 50% of the broadband serviceable locations originally proposed for the project area; or
  (2) The remaining number of locations in the application is less than 50% of the broadband serviceable locations originally proposed for the project area and the application has not been removed from grant funding consideration under subsection (d) of this section.
(f) If an amended application without the overlapping locations is not received by the office by the 10th business day after an applicant receives notice that it may amend its application under subsection (c)(2) of this section, the office may remove the application from grant funding consideration.

Source Note: The provisions of this §16.37 adopted to be effective February 19, 2023, 48 TexReg 685; amended to be effective March 24, 2024, 49 TexReg 1956