The Santa Cruz Civic is alive once again with the sound of the carillon bells.
Downtown has been much quieter the past few weeks, at least at noon and 5pm. That’s because the volume on the city’s carillon bells, which hang high in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, has been turned down.
Carol Scurich, the city’s recreation superintendent, isn’t sure exactly when the problem with the bells started. City staff noticed the song had gotten much quieter, Scurich says, and cranked up the volume to compensate. But when they did, the sound became distorted as the crackling sound from the speakers spread through downtown.
They were left off for a few weeks, and then turned back on, this time at a lower volume. Scurich says one of the speakers had blown out, so anyone thinking the Carillons got turned off merely to spare our hearing missed the mark.
Scurich hopes the city’s new “fantastic” maintenance worker Dan Himan, who’s returning from sick leave, can fix the speaker. If not, the city might fly in an expert from out of the area to fix the carillon bells, as the city did a few years ago.
“The problem with the carillons is that there are only about three people in the United States who can work on them,” Scurich says. “I’ve been here for 25 years, and unfortunately this happens because it malfunctions, and getting someone to fix it is hard.”
Scurich says she’s only ever heard two complaints about the ear-rattling bells. One was about a faulty system that used to ring the bells at odd hours after power outages—and the other from a woman who used to call the city if she didn’t hear the bells ring for a few days. Scurich hasn’t heard from the woman this time, but, if she’s still around, a new repair would probably be music to her ears.
