The owner of a licensed daycare in Beverly Hills, Missouri, has admitted that business licenses he submitted to state child care regulators were fake, even as he accuses the city's mayor of trying to extort him. Williams Academy, located on Natural Bridge Road in the small North St. Louis County municipality, has operated since 2021 and has reportedly failed to pay city taxes the entire time it's been open.
Missouri childcare inspectors cited Williams Academy for reportedly failing to pay city taxes, according to FOX 2. Beverly Hills Mayor Brian K. Jackson accused daycare owner David Williams of forging business licenses and said Williams owed four years of taxes, even though the city gives new businesses their first year free of municipal taxes. Jackson said Williams is running what amounts to an unlicensed business in Beverly Hills despite holding a valid state daycare license — a license the mayor said was partly obtained after the daycare submitted business licenses to regulators that were allegedly fake.
Fabricated Seals and Signatures, Mayor Says
Jackson displayed five alleged fake business licenses and said their seals and signatures were fabricated, the station's report states. Williams acknowledged that the business licenses sent to daycare regulators were not authentic, but he declined to identify who actually forged the documents, and he denied personally forging them. He instead claimed the mayor was extorting money from him and withholding a legitimate business license.
Under Missouri law, the conduct Jackson has described — making, completing, altering, or knowingly using false written documents or official seals with intent to defraud — falls under the state's forgery statute, Missouri Revised Statutes § 570.090, a Class D felony. Per the same account, police and prosecutors will address the alleged license forgeries, while daycare regulators will separately decide the next step against Williams Academy.
A Dispute Over Who Owes What
Williams argues he was never legally required to pay city taxes directly because his business doesn't sell goods — he describes the daycare as a service-based business and says service-based daycare operations don't pay sales taxes. He called the mayor's claim that 1% of daycare revenue is owed to the city incorrect. Jackson, for his part, said the city knew the daycare had children enrolled and therefore knew it had earned revenue subject to the tax, and that the 1% revenue levy helps fund police and other city services.
A Beverly Hills business license requires an annual city tax payment equal to 1% of revenue, according to the same report. That kind of local tax carries outsized weight in a municipality the size of Beverly Hills, which according to Data USA spans just 0.09 square miles and counts 488 residents. Regional reporting from The Guardian has noted that small municipalities with limited commercial tax bases in North St. Louis County rely heavily on tickets and municipal-court revenue to support local police departments and municipal services.
State Licensing Rules Require Municipal Sign-Off
Williams Academy currently holds an active state daycare license, and Missouri's child care licensing rules under Title 5 CSR 25-500.042 address the licensing process, according to regulatory text published by Law.Cornell.Edu. Oversight of that licensing process sits with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of Childhood, which took over child care regulation from the Department of Health and Senior Services in 2022 and now oversees roughly 2,700 licensed child care providers statewide, per StartBusinessByState.com. Williams Academy had some inspection violations in 2026. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education oversees child care licensing.
Williams Academy's website describes Williams as a former Boeing employee who holds a master's degree in computer science and technology from Clark Atlanta University.
For now, the dispute remains unresolved on two tracks. Daycare regulators will decide the next step for Williams Academy's state license, while police and prosecutors will separately address the alleged license forgeries, according to the FOX 2 report.
