Well, I figured out at least one way to HIDE the bell from the users. You can still click on the tiny little square where the button exists, BUT by removing the image for the bell, it becomes un-noticable/hidden.
By editing the spark.jar in your installation folder (C:/Programs/Spark/lib/spark.jar)
And then inside of it:
spark.jar/org/jivesoftware/resource/spark.properties
and removing the path/image for "BUZZ_IMAGE"