I think your metaphor is flawed though, firstly because we're not talking about the maintainer being a caretaker, for all intents and purposes they are the owner of chardet, just not a subset of the IP within, those are two separate entities here. Secondly, the original author doesn't have any ties to this project within the last decade, to imply that they're paying for it or have any ownership over how the project is operated beyond the scope of the license is just wrong.

If you'd want to correct the metaphor, this is a more accurate understanding of the situation:

Is the maintainer obligated to the terms of the original license? yes

Does the original IP holder have any rights beyond that license? no

Is the maintainer free to raze the current hall, as long as the IP-holder's property is appropriately removed first? YES

Now if it were to come out that ownership of the chardet name, pip package, or github organization were transferred to the maintainer under an agreement that the project always stay LGPL regardless of the actual terms of the license that's a whole other thing, but nobody has stated that is the case. The only contention is whether LGPL was violated by the rewrite under a new license, but if that's not the case it is entirely the prerogative of the project maintainers to do as they wish.

That's what free software is all about.

If the community wants the old "community hall" it still exists, they can still use it and do what they want with it. They have a right to the hall, but the maintainer has a right to the repository and the package name and one does not nullify the other.