Fairfield mayor resigns just before meeting surrounding questions about her residency

Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy resigned Tuesday, hours before the City Council was scheduled to discuss an outside investigation into whether she lived in the Northern California city she was elected to lead.

"My days of serving as an elected official in our hometown ends today," Moy wrote in a lengthy statement posted to Facebook. "I am at peace with being a private citizen of Fairfield, as I was most of my life."

The announcement abruptly ended Moy's tenure more than five months before her term was set to expire. She had been elected mayor in 2022 after years on the Fairfield City Council.

Moy's resignation came ahead of a special meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening triggered by a legal process used in California to challenge whether someone has the right to hold public office.

The formal review was initiated after Council Member K. Patrice Williams asked in December for the city to examine Moy's residency, according to the Vacaville Reporter. Moy has also alleged that Council Member Doug Carr earlier asked the Solano County district attorney to investigate her residency.

The council was expected to discuss a report on Moy's residency and a request from the mayor for reimbursement of legal fees tied to the investigation.

The outside report did not make a definitive finding that Moy lived outside Fairfield. It said the evidence gathered was "subject to interpretation" and that the City Council would have to decide how to weigh it.

The report said Moy and her husband owned a Fairfield home when she ran for mayor in 2022, but vacated it in 2025. Moy told investigators she intended to remain a Fairfield resident and later stayed at other properties in the city, according to the report.

But the report also described inconsistencies in Moy's account and said investigators observed her vehicle at a property outside Fairfield on multiple mornings. A property manager at one Fairfield apartment Moy said she had lived in told investigators she did not know Moy and had not seen her on the property, according to the report.

Moy denied wrongdoing and cast the investigation as politically motivated. In her resignation statement, she accused several council members of using taxpayer money to pursue her, violating her civil rights and denying her due process.

She also alleged the investigation was connected to local political disputes over California Forever, the controversial proposal to build a new city on farmland in eastern Solano County.

Moy said the stress of the investigation, public criticism and recent turmoil in the city had hurt her health and her family.

"I wanted to push forward, because the facts and the law are on my side," she wrote. "But I won't spend another day fighting because my family and friends are much more important, as is my health."

Moy said she was leaving the city "in the very capable hands" of Vice Mayor Pam Bertani. Under California law, when an elective city office becomes vacant, a city council generally must either appoint a replacement or call a special election within 60 days.

The resignation followed days of grief and anger in Fairfield after gunfire erupted June 3 in the parking lot outside Fairfield High School following the Sem Yeto Continuation High School graduation ceremony.

In her resignation statement, Moy said the city was in pain and that council meetings had become volatile as residents demanded answers. She said protesters' yelling and chanting had made it impossible to conduct city business and that seeing a friend crying in council chambers helped convince her to step down.

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