Patrick planned to stop by the Town Green on Thursday for one of 15 town meetings scheduled across the state this summer.

“We’ve done these throughout the time I’ve been in office but it’s really about the same thing, which is getting out and engaging directly with people — listening to them, letting them tell me what they are worried about, concerned about or hopeful about so that I can keep testing whether what we are working on here in the governor’s office and in this administration really does respond to real issues in real people’s lives,” Patrick said.

Likely previewing some of the topics that will come up at the meeting, Patrick spoke Tuesday of the challenges that lie ahead for the state, including future economic difficulties, saying, “We could lay off every single state employee and still have a multi-million dollar hole.”

Patrick said at other recent town hall meetings the questions have overwhelmingly been about the economy.

“There’s a lot of anxiety about the economy, as you’d expect. There’s a lot of concern about how hard the economic downturn globally has hit individual people and working families in the Commonwealth. We’ve had folks that have lost jobs, had their hours cut back, or, if they haven’t, they are deeply anxious that they will be,” he said. “I keep trying to make the point that we will come out of it, because I think people need to be reminded that all economies are cyclical and that we’ll cycle out of this.”

On whether the recent sales tax hike might prevent future cuts in local aid, Patrick was cautiously optimistic.

“‘I hope so’ is the answer, but it depends on what happens with the rest of the economy. In September of last year, the bottom started to fall out and we made emergency cuts and we went deep in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to chase this ball downhill because it gets harder and harder to manage those cuts the further you get into the fiscal year. Yet, we had to go back four times in the course of a year because the economy continued to shrink. Now most economists are telling us that we are at or near the bottom,” Patrick said.

“This budget for fiscal year 2010 is smaller than this year’s budget. I think that’s the first time that’s happened in a long, long time. This budget is responsible, it’s balanced and I’m proud to say it’s on time. We’re obviously going to need to watch this week to week and manage it,” he said.

With three candidates already lined up to run against him in 2010, the governor seemed upbeat about the Commonwealth’s future.

“No one wants to be premature, but I am very, very hopeful … because we are making decisions about building blocks for our future around how we invest [by] putting money into roads and bridges and rails and education. … If we do it and we do it wisely and thoughtfully, we’ll be stronger when we come out. I’d like to see us be one of the first states out of the recession,” he said.

Patrick, who initially wanted to see a gas tax increase instead of a hike in the sales tax, defended the final decision, saying, “I think even with the [sales tax] increase we are quite competitive with other states in the New England region. New Hampshire is an outlier, for sure, but otherwise we’re quite competitive. A sales tax was not my first choice because it can have some effects that we aren’t happy about, but I think we’ll be OK. I think we’re going to have to continue to market our tourism trade. I’m very optimistic.”

Look for complete coverage of his visit in next week’s Express.