The HPA was created in December 1998 by a City Council ordinance that amended the Hartford Municipal Code. This ordinance was adopted pursuant to Chapter 100, C.G.S. 7-202, of Connecticut General Statutes. This State statute permits towns and municipalities to create parking authorities. As such, the Hartford Parking Authority is a separate "body corporate and politic" to the municipality of Hartford. The HPA is governed by five members, who are nominated by the City of Hartford Mayor and approved by the Hartford City Council.

As currently authorized under Chapter 10 of the Hartford Municipal Code, the Hartford Parking Authority is responsible for creating, establishing, maintaining, and operating the City's dedicated parking facilities. Under this ordinance, the HPA is responsible for the M & T Parking Lot, and Hartford Public Library Parking, Church Street, MAT, and Morgan Street Garages.

Our Mission "The City of Hartford's on and off-street parking system shall support existing land uses, encourage economic growth, assist the City's economic vitality, and be founded in the principles of transportation system management, by providing adequate and high quality parking resources and related services for all user groups that need to park within the City."

 
Our Goals Parking management is an interrelated web of strategies and tactics that are formulated to meet certain goals for the parking system. The coactive goals to support the Mission Statement read as follows:

●  Providing sufficient parking to service existing land uses, additional parking supply to supplement private parking supply in areas of the downtown that suffer from a parking deficit, and adequate parking supply to support new development initiatives that correspond to anticipated parking demand

●  Maintaining structurally sound, safe, clean, well-lit, and well landscaped parking facilities that aesthetically integrate and functionally serve the community in which they exist

●  Recognizing that parking is a business and a service, and as such, must follow a business model that is financially self-sustaining and founded in the economic law of supply and demand

●  Employing the least offensive and most understandable parking management strategies that are fair, consistent, and equitably administered

●  Preserving the most convenient and proximate parking spaces for short-term parking patrons, presumably retail parking patrons, while encouraging long-term parking patrons, presumably office and retail employees, to park in spaces that are less proximate to their destinations

●  Promoting compliance with parking regulations

●  Promoting easy access to parking destinations in a pedestrian friendly environment

●  Promoting alternative means of transportation through relationships, communication and cooperation with mass transit providers

●  Preserving parking for its residents in neighborhoods throughout the city

●  Promoting a consistent look so that public parking is easily identifiable

●  Maintaining effective and timely internal and external communications