NEW ORLEANS (AP) — President Barack Obama’s hurricane recovery chief, in just her first week on the job, said she sees her office playing a role in major issues that need coordination among agencies, such as affordable rental housing.Janet Woodka said Tuesday that she will have direct links to the White House and to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — access she believes underscores the administration’s commitment to speeding the Gulf Coast’s recovery from the 2005 hurricanes.”The feeling is that we’re at a point in this recovery where things could really move and really make a difference to people on the ground,” Woodka said. “And that’s what I’m hoping we get to in a short time.”Napolitano pledged a new look at the recovery process when the Obama administration took office in January. Woodka points to changes that have already been made, including new state-federal “decision” teams meant to help settle infrastructure funding disputes.Given that, “I think that we will see a lot of the projects that are necessary for people to go on with their lives” — like police and fire stations — “coming to resolution,” she said.But Woodka said she sees her office’s role, while not yet fully carved out, as less hands-on on specific projects, like a single firehouse, and more involved on “the larger issues that really need multi-agency coordination and that need multiple federal, state and local partners at the table to come to a consensus.”She cited as an example affordable rental housing, which her predecessor, retired Maj. Gen. Doug O’Dell, also was concerned about.O’Dell had convened sit-downs with local, state and federal officials to try to uncover and overcome obstacles in rebuilding work. Many of those meetings dealt with FEMA-related issues that Woodka hopes can now be hashed out, at least in part, through the other channels.Woodka, who served as legislative affairs director in the federal recovery office prior to her appointment, said she plans to be in Louisiana and Mississippi next week, talking with people, “making sure that the issues that are on their plates are the issues that are on ours so that we can move forward.”She said she believes housing will be among them but she also wants to talk about “larger infrastructure issues.” She declined to cite any examples until she spoke with state and local officials on their thinking.Obama extended the coordinator’s office, established by President George W. Bush after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, through September. Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation have urged a two-year extension but Woodka said she’s focused not on the ongoing discussions about the sunset date but on what she can accomplish, and how quickly.—–Contact The Daily Reveille news staff at [email protected]