CHAPPELL -- Senator Paul Strommen was the guest speaker at the Chappell Chamber of Commerce meeting Wednesday.

His presentation focused on available State funding and encouraging Panhandle communities to seek these funds.

"This all started ... I was up in Hyannis ... I had some folks approach me curious about funding that might be available for a parks project. They were working on a park and just were curious as to whether there were State funds that were available for that. The really didn't know much about it. As I started diving into that question, I realized that there's a need out here for us to really understand what is available; not just from parks projects but economic development, and housing, and beautification, and pretty much all of the dollars that were available to us in western Nebraska," Strommen said.

He said there are a number of funding opportunities from the State.

"There are over 40 programs currently that you can tap money from. I would like to see those dollars coming out here. Obviously, Lincoln and Omaha get a fair share of that money and I think in the past we just really weren't aware of the money that's available," he said.

He said communities should be applying for funding as much as they can.

Strommen said one of the recent studies was "brain drain" on the state.

"I'm on the committee for state planning. In state planning, we look at a lot of different subjects. One of the subjects we looked at recently was 'brain drain' in the state. UNO did a extremely comprehensive report on why people are leaving, what jobs they are leaving for, what salary they are leaving for," he said.