By Tim Seyfert

A marching band rehearsing at the Foothill College stadium last month hit a sour note with some neighboring Los Altos Hills residents, who convinced the school’s president to kill the tunes and send the musicians packing.

The Renegades Association of California, a San Francisco-based adult drum and bugle corp. unaffiliated with Foothill, was holding a series of rehearsals last month when a group of 11 residents sent a written complaint to the school’s athletic department Aug. 22. The neighbors claimed the sounds of the instruments were in violation of the town’s municipal code and that the school wasn’t being “mindful of its neighbors.”

According to town law, noise over a certain decibel level is constituted as a pubic nuisance, especially during evening hours and weekends.

The band had been holding its practices on Saturdays and Sundays, from around 9:30 a.m. to after 9 p.m., according to the neighbors who complained they were “subjected to several assaults of cacophonous sounds” and that the “noise interfered with the quiet enjoyment of (their) properties,” the letter read.

The marching band had been leasing the field for summer rehearsals every August for the past three years without any previous incident, according to Foothill president Bernadine Fong,

Yet, upon receiving the letter, Fong responded by promptly terminating the school’s contract with the band and sending a written apology to the neighbors.

“We have informed the band that we will no longer be renting the field to them,” Fong’s letter read. “We do apologize that their presence caused such a disruption this year.”